Por isso q eu me amarro no Tomi Ahonen, a minha bússola no mercado mobile.
And I should mention the App Stores. While all the silly hype globally in mobile is about apps – I have been repeating and repeating and repeating, that it is a trivial – trivial – sized non-business (today). It may – it may – become meaningful somewhere years down the line. We heard from Apple – the leader in app stores – earlier this year, that the total earned by the Apple iPhone App Store last year was under a billion dollars.
A billion out of what, over 200,000 actual apps that exist in the App Store? A billion may seem like a “big number” to those who don’t understand mobile, but hey, Crazy Frog the ringing tone – yes just one – one – ringing tone – sold half a billion dollars – in paid downloads to mobile phone users – in one year – three years before Apple even opened up its app store. Put that into your iPhone app and think again. What is the bestselling category on the iPhone – games. What is the bestselling game? Angry Birds. Sold what, 4 million copies. This is the best game on the ‘amazing’ App Store. But we mentioned on this blog years ago, that Artificial Life’s side-line product (their main business is TV-mobile interactive services like SMS TV games etc) – a mobile Java game called ‘V-Girl’ the Virtual Girlfriend on your phone – sold 4 million copies. Paid downloads and paid customers to mobile phones, not smartphones, globally, years before Angry Birds. 4 million is nothing amazing to the mobile industry. Its a nice number yes, but what is the record-breaking achievement in the tiny sandbox called iPhone, is trivial to the big world of mobile.
The total global mobile phone app market last year was worth 5 billion dollars (said Chetan Sharma Consulting). Most of that was not consumer-oriented app store applications. No, most of that was enterprise/corporate solutions to integrate IT apps like SAP and Oracle to mobile. Then the comparison – SMS text messaging alone is worth 100 Billion dollars. Mobile data is worth 250 Billion dollars. App Stores are less than meaningful (today). Yes, from small things, big things can grow. But the hysteria about app stores is totally ridiculous today.
Run, Motherfucker, Run 